By LARRY ROHTER

Published: February 17, 2005

In the acceptance speech she delivered after her novel ''The News From Paraguay'' won the 2004 National Book Award in the United States, Lily Tuck made a surprising admission. ''Actually I have never been to Paraguay, nor do I intend to go,'' she said.

That was in November. But late last week Ms. Tuck arrived here in the capital as a guest of the government and, by virtue of having addressed the most traumatic episode in Paraguay's history in her novel, found herself dragged into a perennial, intensely emotional and often bitter debate about national identity and honor.

Set in the mid-19th century, ''The News From Paraguay'' focuses on the love affair between the country's strongman, Marshal Francisco Solano L?, and his Irish mistress, Elisa Lynch.

It not only includes references to masturbation and oral sex, which would have been controversial enough, but also portrays Marshal L? as so arrogant, ''cruel and ambitious'' that he plunges the country into an ill-advised war in which more than half the population perishes.

None of that particularly bothered the democratic government now in power, which is still struggling to overcome the problems left by Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, the dictator who ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989. The authorities initially saw the success of Ms. Tuck's book as a unique opportunity to promote their landlocked country of five million people, which is constantly overshadowed by its much larger and more prosperous neighbors, Brazil and Argentina, as a tourist destination.

No sooner had Ms. Tuck's visit been announced, though, than a controversy erupted. A business consultant and rancher named Roberto Eaton wrote a letter to the foreign minister and other officials to protest what he saw as an embarrassingly meek response to an insult to Paraguay's image and history.

''This book is disgusting, absolutely pornographic and a calumny,'' Mr. Eaton said in an interview. ''People can write whatever they want, but that doesn't mean we should be honoring the author. Just because her novel won a prize does not make it something magnificent. Yes, the book puts Paraguay on the map, but this is hardly the way to do it.''

In an essay published last week by the country's main newspaper, ABC Color, Mar?Eugenia Garay, a poet, also accused Ms. Tuck of succumbing to the ''typical Eurocentric vision'' of Latin America.

The book depicts Paraguay, Ms. Garay complained, as a savage country ''populated by uncouth and hairy aborigines, distinguishable from monkeys only by the fact that they know how to play the harp,'' Paraguay's national instrument.

Though Ms. Tuck's novel has not yet been published in Spanish, newspaper headlines described it as lascivious and claimed that it portrayed Marshal L? as a ''sexual maniac.'' As a result, radio call-in programs were flooded with phone calls from offended listeners, and a local official called the book racist and demanded that Ms. Tuck be declared persona non grata.

But others, including some prominent historians and writers, defended Ms. Tuck, noting that she was writing fiction, not history. One of the nine surviving great-grandchildren of Francisco Solano L? and Elisa Lynch even ended up having dinner with Ms. Tuck, a bit of historical symmetry that much delighted her.

''I have no problem at all with the book, whose real message I think has been distorted,'' said the great-grandson, Miguel ngel Solano L?, a former ambassador to Japan and Taiwan. ''The novel has produced an effervescence that I think is healthy, reopening a national debate about our history.''

Historians outside Paraguay have often been harsh in their evaluations of Marshal L?. They point to the folly of his provoking a conflict with Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, his strategic mistakes in prosecuting the war, which began in 1864 and ended only with his death in 1870, and the brutality with which he often treated his own troops and people.

But here in Paraguay he is regarded not as a crazed, inept tyrant but as a national hero, and the war he fought as a sacred cause. Paraguayans believe that he prevented the country from being swallowed up by Brazil and Argentina and blame their neighbors for the terrible damage done to the country: the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, the destruction of the economy and the loss of much of its territory.

''Before the war this was a vigorous country that was developing rapidly and was in many ways more economically and technologically advanced than its neighbors,'' Evanhy de Gallegos, the secretary of tourism, argued. ''The war ripped the country apart in what was almost a genocide and left us with a pain that has never gone away, and with no compensation for our suffering.''

Ms. Tuck, 66, is an American citizen born in France who spent part of her childhood in Peru and Uruguay and also lived in Thailand as an adult. She has written three other novels and a collection of short stories but seemed startled by the passionate, even visceral response to her latest novel.

''I'm glad I didn't come before I wrote the book,'' she said, ''because I would have been overwhelmed by all the factions and their points of view. I am a quiet person, not a politician, so I don't know if I would even have started to write if I knew all of the issues that were at stake.''

During a six-day stay that ended Tuesday, Ms. Tuck visited tourist sites in the capital, as well as some battlefields of the Great War. But she also toured 17th-century Jesuit missions and Iguaz?lls, the settings for the Oscar-winning film ''The Mission,'' and the Itaip?m, by some measures the world's largest hydroelectric project.

For safety's sake, Ms. Tuck was accompanied during her travels by a police bodyguard. But once she got past an initial news conference at which she was asked about the sexual habits of American soldiers in Iraq and the brutality of the combat there, she said she found the real, contemporary Paraguay to be much kinder and gentler than the imagined one that appears in her novel.

''Everyone has been so generous, from the chambermaid at the hotel who wanted to kiss my hand to people in government, and I am quite touched,'' she said. ''I just hope that I can live up their expectations.''

Photos: Marshal Francisco Solano López, left, ruled Paraguay in the 1860's. Above, Lily Tuck, center, whose novel is about Marshal López's affair with Elisa Lynch, met their great-grandson and the tourism minister. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images); (Photo by Pablo Cabado for The New York Times)